Q+A: Megan Volpert on Why Alanis Morissette Matters and Writing 15 Books in 18 Years
Read and learn!
Author, professor and healer Megan Volpert joins us today for a Q+A about her brand new book Why Alanis Morissette Matters and the secrets of her productivity!
Tamara Palmer/Music Book Club: Will you use your new book in one of your classes? Have you or would you ever teach a course on Alanis?
Megan Volpert: I try not to teach any of my own books in their entirety; that’s always struck me as a little shady. Students are already coughing up tuition money for my expertise and compelling them to buy my books on top of that seems like too much gravy. In fact, one of the two universities I teach at requires approval paperwork if you plan to teach your own book. Building a course around women in music more broadly, with Alanis as one of several focal points, is somewhere on the list of ten thousand things I’d like to do.
That said, I can see a lot of applications for individual excerpts in classes I already teach regularly. There’s a chapter on “Right Through You” discussing commodification and competition among women in music that my MFA students could definitely take to heart as they step into the literary marketplace, which imposes most of the same obstacles as the music industry. There’s a chapter on “Ironic” that the undergrads in my Gender in Pop Culture course would appreciate, as it builds feminist bridges between sarcasm, sincerity, and the postmodern meme-ification of everything. There’s a chapter on “Perfect” that would be a nice antidote to some of the anxieties that tend to surface in my Feminist Manifesto course.
Are you disciplined with your writing practice(s) in general, or how have you managed to write over a dozen books?!
Yeah, a lot of people have tried to point out to me that I’ve been too disciplined. My personal learning trajectory as a writer has included tutelage from some lions who crank out a new book every eighteen months, tons of scrambling to meet deadlines as a journalist in order to pay my bills, a worry that summer vacation is never long enough to accomplish a project from beginning to end—all undergirded by a natural Gen X tendency to be tightly wound. There’s a lot of fear and defensiveness embedded in there, but on the other hand, I’ve written a lot simply because I’m an intense person who doesn’t run out of things that seem worthy of public discussion.
The notion of work/life balance isn’t necessarily an adequate model when you genuinely and deeply love everything that constitutes your work. I understand that fifteen books in eighteen years is a lot, and now that I’m in my forties, finding a somewhat less breakneck pace is a priority for me because there are some not-literary things I want to have time to get into. For example, I’m starting to make my own incense and I haven’t picked up my lap steel in like two whole years. It probably helps that the twin demons of fame and fortune have not really come knocking, but there’s still a lot of deprogramming to do down here on the B-list.
Do you have any all-time favorite or recently released favorite books to recommend to us?
The idea of choosing a singular all-time favorite book is beyond me, but there are some writers that I do follow pretty religiously. In poetry and hybrid/essayish territory: Laura Mullen, Gina Myers, Daphne Gottlieb, Patti Smith, and Wayne Koestenbaum. I don’t read a lot of fiction, but I’ll read anything by Naomi Novik.
Mostly I keep to nonfiction, especially theory or philosophy. I used to feel, as Nora Ephron famously said, that everything is copy, but I’ve begun to read books “for fun” again. That is, books without any obvious relation to my own work that still feel interesting to me as a human. One of the best books I picked up last year was Annalee Newitz’s Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind.
Somewhat more in the work zone, there are three women I want to shout-out. Andrea Warner did a book that included a big slice of Alanis, so that was how I first encountered her, but her most recent book is a super fun pop culture jam on Dirty Dancing that is horrifyingly relevant to American politics right now. Also ongoingly noteworthy is Caroline Hagood, who is my brunch buddy when I visit NYC. If you’re into feminist monstrosity, her several books on the subject really can’t be beat. My fave is Weird Girls. And last but in no way least is Tanya Pearson, a deeply hilarious historian who did us ‘90s alternative kids a total solid by writing Pretend We’re Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the ‘90s.
Caroline and Tanya are joining me for a discussion of all things related to bad girl politics in NYC this summer. We’re going to kick off Pride weekend at P&T Knitwear the evening of Thursday, June 26th.
Do you have any favorites from the Music Matters series?
Oh, absolutely. Here’s my top 4 in chronological order. The first book I read in the series was Donna Gaines on the Ramones. Then I read Caryn Rose on Patti Smith. Caryn is as funny as she is fierce, and I admire her work in general for its honesty. Then I reviewed Tanya Pearson’s debut book on Marianne Faithfull, and that’s when my own project on Alanis began to get a little gas in the tank.
The fourth book is one I’ve got my hands on but am kind of afraid to read, which is Allyson McCabe on Sinead O’Connor. I trust that Allyson delivers an excellent analysis, but ever since Sinead’s passing, I find it very emotionally difficult to read anything about her. I was this way for a long while after Prince died also. It’ll eventually pass, and then I’ll pick up the book. P.S. Prince would be a killer addition to the Music Matters series.
While reading this, I dug up the transcript of an Alanis press conference I got to participate in back in 2008. I am kind of mortified now that I used my one question to ask about whether she'd perform her cover of "My Humps" on tour that year! If you could ask Alanis one question right now, what would it be?
The book chapter on “Ironic” concludes with a brief meditation on that cover. Her approach to “My Humps” and whether it was a one-off joke or something she’d be willing to tour are definitely things worth contemplating—I don’t think your question is that bad! Your confession inspired me to look up what I vaguely remember as my own worst interview. I’d been on staff at PopMatters for about ten minutes and called dibs on a half hour phoner with (all hail) Shirley Manson. All I remember is that she rightly corrected me when I said that Garbage was a grunge band, and then I decently rebounded by asking about what books she’d been reading. She was lovely and I was an idiot. Blessedly, I cannot find a trace of this interview anywhere, either online or in my cloud storage.
If I could ask Alanis one question right now, I wouldn’t. There’s plenty of stuff I’d like to know, of course including whether she read my book or liked it. If she ever wanted me to have those answers, I’m not hard to find. Alanis has been a profound influence in my life, and really the most honest and respectful thing I could do to engage with her on a human-to-human level would be to look her in the eye, smile, and sit in silence with her for a few moments. Hold that space of quiet connection where more words are inadequate, and hope that we mutually understand the silence to be filling up with love. Just a little reiki exchange.
Previously in our Q+A series:
